elected ad hoc, without power to amend the proposals but merely authorized to ratify or reject them, is little more than an indirect and unsatisfactory method of counting the votes for and against. In competition with the method of the direct vote of the electors which the people are accustomed to use in amending state constitutions, it is more than probable that ratification by the state legislatures or by conventions would go to the wall, just as the convention method, though theoretically the better way, has never been chosen by Congress in submitting amendments on account of the greater practical advantages of ratification by the state legislatures. Furthermore, the plan makes no provision for the proposal of amendments on the initiative of the states. In view of the fact that the state governments are becoming laboratories for trying out political inventions, it is to be expected that some important devices for a better system of government, including particularly methods of regulating industry and commerce, will be discovered in them. It is important that the new machinery for the proposal of amendments should provide a means of presenting these for general adoption throughout the country.

All of these specifications for a new amending clause are met in the joint resolution introduced into Congress by Senator LaFollette towards the close of the last session, which presents the following:

Article XVIII. The Congress, whenever an absolute majority of both houses shall deem it necessary, or on application of ten states by resolution adopted in each by the legislature thereof or by a majority of the electors voting thereon, shall propose amendments to this constitution to be submitted in each of the several states to the electors qualified to vote for the election of Representatives, and the vote shall be taken at the next ensuing election of Representatives in such manner as the Congress prescribes. And if in a majority of the states a majority of the electors voting approve the proposed amendments, and if a majority of all the electors voting also approve the proposed amendments, they shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of this constitution.

This proposal, it will be seen, embodies and adapts the prin

29 ciples that have been tested both in the several states and in the foreign countries which have been considered. One objection will perhaps be made to it, namely, that it does not take account of the fact that in some states women are entitled to vote as well as men and that these states would add a disproportionate number to the total vote throughout the country. A similar situation confronted the framers of the Australian constitution and they met the difficulty by providing that "until the qualification of electors of members of the House of Representatives becomes uniform throughout the commonwealth only one-half the votes for and against the proposed law shall be counted in any state in which adult suffrage prevails." This clause, however, proved to be entirely unnecessary because before the first proposed amendments to the Australian constitution were submitted the enfranchisement of women had been achieved in every state. On account of the recent remarkable development of the equal-suffrage movement in the United States it seems likely that by the time any new amending clause shall have received the approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and of the legislatures of three-fourths of the states this difficulty will have vanished. A temporary provision to meet it would not, however, interfere with the general plan of Senator LaFollette's resolution.

As this proposition provides, with adequate safeguards, sufficient facility for the proposal of amendments which are widely supported and for their incorporation into the constitution when a majority of the states and of the whole electorate have expressed their approval, it is worthy of the earnest consideration of those who, in the words of Professor Munroe Smith, have "realized that the first article in any sincerely intended progressive program must be the amendment of the amending clause of the Federal Constitution."

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THE REORGANIZATION OF STATE GOVERNMENT ·

HENRY JONES FORD

Professor of Politics, Princeton University

O understand the events of our times we must see them

T°

in true perspective. There is one notion that we must discard, namely, that our existing state constitutions represent constitutional arrangements made by the fathers, and having back of them the weight of their authority and influence. I think that idea is wrong. We have only to consider our political history to find that our state constitutions were simply provisional arrangements to meet a casual emergency. There was no idea that they should be regarded as fixing the type of government. They were a sort of act of settlement to provide some basis for action with the expectation that political experience would eventually bring governmental institutions into accord with the needs of the people.

This thought received strong expression in some early docuuments. In the Federalist (no. 47) Madison remarked:

I wish not to be regarded as an advocate for the particular organizations of the several state governments. I am fully aware that among the many excellent principles which they exemplify, they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger of the inexperience, under which they are framed.

And again in the Federalist (no. 37) he said:

It may be pronounced with assurance that the people of this country will never be satisfied until some remedy be applied to the vicissitudes and uncertainties which characterize the state administrations.

No. 15 of the Federalist is virtually an analysis of the defects and incapacity of state administration, and it was just such defects that energized the movement for our national

1 Address delivered at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, October 26, 1912.

constitution. In the constitutional convention of 1787 Mercer of Maryland bluntly declared that the real business in hand

was to

protect the people against those speculating legislatures, which are now plundering them throughout the United States.

Mercer's analysis of the situation, reported in Madison's Journal for August 14, 1787, is remarkable for its prescience. He argued that unless the executive is directly connected with the legislature, its members will prey upon the people instead of defending the people. He said:

The governments of America will become aristocracies. They are so already. The public measures are calculated for the benefit of the governors, not the people. The people are dissatisfied and complain. They change their rulers, and the public measures are changed, but it is only a change of one scheme of emolument to the rulers, for another. The people gain nothing by it, but an addition of instability to their other evils.

As a remedy Mercer proposed what is now designated as cabinet government. He argued that "the executive ought to have a council, being members of both Houses."

The distrust of existing forms of authority was so great at that period that Jefferson, then in France, felt it as strongly as statesmen at home. On December 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to Madison: "The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitution that there shall always be a twelve-month between the engrossing of a bill and the passing of it."

These citations are typical of two tendencies very marked in our political history. Mercer's words show that he was looking toward structural order, whereas Jefferson looked toward restraint upon details of procedure. The latter tendency has so far governed constitutional change in this country. Owing to the notion that the way to guard against abuse of power is to multiply checks upon the exercise of power, our state constitutions are schemes of restriction constantly increasing in complexity. There has been continual change without im

provement. From 1776 to 1909, 127 distinct state constitutions have been adopted in this country. We have no record from which to get the exact number of amendments, but from 1894 to 1904, 381 constitutional amendments were proposed, of which 217 were adopted. The process has had curious results. For instance, if you examine the constitution of Maryland, you will find in the bill of rights a declaration that "for the redress of grievances and for amending and strengthening the laws the legislature ought to be frequently convened." But the process of change since has been such that a provision has been inserted prohibiting the legislature from meeting more than once in two years, unless specially convoked by the governor.

Hostility to legislative sessions has become a general characteristic of our state constitutions. There has been a marked movement toward biennial and even quadrennial sessions. It is plain that there has been a displacement of the legislature from its normal position as the body representing the people. Constitutional provisions exhibit the legislature as being a misrepresentative body against which precautions must be taken. When you compare American constitutions with those of other countries, you will observe that restrictions upon legislative authority are an American peculiarity. European state constitutions assume that the legislative assembly will fulfil its proper functions; American constitutions are framed on the assumption that the legislature will misbehave unless subject to restraint.

Another American peculiarity is the expansion of the executive negative. After every session in New York or Pennsylvania the governor sits in judgment upon hundreds of enactments, determining which shall be law and which not. A similar exaltation of executive prerogative is seen in the action of governors dealing with the appropriation bills. In 1909

Governor Stuart of Pennsylvania cut $20,000,000 from the appropriation bills by his vetoes. According to the traditional scheme the governor is the chief executive and it is the function of the representative assembly to control his actions, but now, instead of depending on the legislatures to control the governors, the people depend upon the governors to control the legisla